


Ghost In The Machine

by arkemisia, Synekdokee



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Cherno Alpha - Freeform, Gen, Gipsy Danger - Freeform, Romeo Blue - Freeform, Striker Eureka - Freeform, canon character death, halloween fic, jaeger science, mako being awesome, original character death, spooky elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-31
Updated: 2014-10-31
Packaged: 2018-02-23 10:30:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 14,624
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2544266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arkemisia/pseuds/arkemisia, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Synekdokee/pseuds/Synekdokee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Mako braced her forehead on her hands and squeezed her eyes shut. She could still see Yancy Becket standing next to her, entering commands over and over."</p><p>Or: A collection of stories on what happens when a pilot dies in a Jaeger.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Romeo Blue: Extermination Is Not An Option

**Author's Note:**

> A little Halloween spoopyness for Pacific Rim! We mostly have no idea what we're doing. Massive thanks to our beta Liz, or ohhbabysaurus.

 

 

 

_“Neural Echoes (noun. \ˈnu̇r-əl ˈe-(ˌ)kō\:_  
 _Neural after images;_  
 _memories of previous pilots  
burned into the neural network of a used Jaeger.”_

 

 

Romeo Blue was the first Jaeger to fall after Gipsy Danger, and the second one to fall on US soil in a short time. The kaiju had swiped clean from the side and cut through the Conn-Pod, sending the Jaeger crashing to the ground, lifeless. They had to send in Mammoth Apostle to save Seattle, and she won by the skin of her teeth. The city was a half ruin by the time the kaiju was killed.

As the clean-up operations began and plans were made to transport Romeo Blue’s hull to Oblivion Bay, the press swooped in like vultures, questioning the Jaeger Program ( _“Two Jaegers and three American pilots lost in three months, is America taking part in a losing battle?”_ ) and the strength of the United States’ technical skills and pilot training.

They were down to three functioning American Jaegers, and the media debate about their public image was raging.

The American PPDC branch, the United Nations and selected government officials, including Secretary-General Krieger, held a meeting to determine how to continue. Commissioning a new Jaeger was deemed unacceptable, as public use of tax-payer money to build more Jaegers would be a PR suicide. Discussion was held over moving one of the foreign-built Jaegers to one of the North American Shatterdomes, but during such a precarious, uncertain time it was bulldozed by the United Nations as anything but an emergency fix.

Finally Marshall Hammond brought forth a suggestion. Surely fixing an old Jaeger would be more cost effective than commissioning new one. At the same time it would send the public a message of an America that could not be knocked down, a nation that would persevere.

 

 

 

 

The damage done to Romeo Blue had been devastating, but concentrated to the Conn-Pod. The main structure barely needed more than cosmetic work. As the Jaeger would either way be shipped to Oblivion Bay in Oakland California, changing the transport route to the Los Angeles Shatterdome wouldn’t wrack up extra costs. It would appeal to the powers that be more than the expensive alternatives.

Hammond and the head of LA Jaeger engineering drafted a cost estimate along with a tentative time frame, and presented it to the Secretary General. They were shut out of the subsequent committee hearing, until Marshall Hammond was called in for a video conference.

They were given a tight budget and an even tighter deadline to repair Romeo Blue.

 

 

 

Two J-Tech teams were formed. Marshall Hammond assigned Chief LOCCENT Officer Beverly Hannah in charge of the programming team patching up the neural interface damaged by the kaiju. An engineer team was put together to take care of the structural damage done to the Conn-Pod. The goal was to get as many basic features operational as fast as possible, to prove to the UN that this concept was sound. If they could prove the Jaeger could be made functional again, they might buy some time and an extended budget for the structural repairs.

The project was kept low key. The Gages had barely been buried by the time Romeo Blue was shipped to LA, and the Marshall was warned about a moral backlash from both the public and the Ranger community over recommissioning a Jaeger that went down with its pilots. It was more than Ranger etiquette - a Jaeger belonged to the pilots assigned to it, an unwritten rule. The same way one never leaves their copilot behind, handing a Jaeger whose both pilots had been killed in action to a new crew would have been seen as an act of disrespect. No Ranger who had previously piloted would have accepted the assignment.

Fortunately for the Americans, Kodiak Island spat out new and desperate Ranger candidates at a good, if slowing, pace. Either way, there were always going to be more potential pilots than there were free Jaegers.

Hammond pushed the restoration crews. They minimised their material losses and kept as much of the old equipment as possible. This included the Pons, cannibalised out of the mangled helmets taken off Bruce and Trevin Gage. It was a detail kept off the official records.

There was still a jagged gash travelling through the length of the Conn-Pod when the programmers announced they were ready to test the interface updates. Hammond supervised with Officer Hannah as the techs setup the auxiliary power, Romeo Blue’s reactor still waiting to be made functional.

“The power’s on,” Hannah confirmed, pulling the LOCCENT operations frames up on her screen. She opened the comms system. “We’ll need manual startup, send Jones into the Conn-Pod please.”

The interface came to life suddenly, the results of system status checks running on the screen smoothly.

“Well that was fast,” Hammond grunted.

“He’s not even in the Pod yet,” one of the engineers said, shooting the Marshall a worried look from where he’d been looking down at the torn Conn-Pod through the overview window.

Hammond strode over to the him and watched as Jones crossed the bridge between the drivesuit room and the Pod. “Why is the Jaeger online?” he looked at Hannah over his shoulder.

“It… shouldn’t be? Is someone else in there?”

The Jaeger comm light flickered on and Jones’s voice came over the radio. “ _Uh. Sir? I think you should see this. Please come to the Conn-Pod. Officer Hannah too, if you will._ ”

They glanced at each other before Hannah grabbed her tablet and they started off down the staircase.

 

“What’s so revolutionary now,” Hammond growled as Jones waved them into the cockpit.

“That,” Jones said, and pointed at the cracked HUD.

_Pilots online, manual start up initiated:_

R-BGAGE_154.43-K

R-TGAGE_759.42-F

 

 

 

 

Hannah, Marshall Hammond and the head technicians converged in the control room.

“It’s gotta be a problem with the software,” one of the technicians said. “We’ve double checked the hardware for shorts and faulty circuits and wiring, and there’s nothing that would explain something like this.”

Hannah nodded, tapping her finger against the desk. Her face was scrunched in a frown. “You pushed us into a tight schedule; we had to cut corners getting the support features running and didn’t have time to test things out thoroughly enough.”

“And I’m going to keep pushing you,” Hammond snapped, voice hard. “We’re going to run out of funding if we can’t fix this soon. I want the Jaeger up and running for neural bridge testing.”

Hannah gave a frustrated huff. “Sir, I’m not sure this is something we can just slap a band-aid on!”

“How about you start with figuring out what the problem is before you tell me it can’t be fixed,” the Marshall growled. Hannah gave him a mullish look but didn’t argue.

“Good,” the Marshall nodded. “You’re dismissed.”

 

 

 

“He’s being a bit unreasonable, don’t you think,” Jones asked later as Hannah was running Romeo’s diagnostics. She shrugged.

“He’s under more pressure than we are.”

“Do you think you can fix it?” Jones peered over her shoulder. She shoved him off with a quiet groan.

“I don’t know. I might be able to bypass it if I can figure out what part of the system is causing it. Just need to do some rerouting.”

“Not exactly what the Marshall wanted.”

Hannah gave him the finger. “He’s just gonna have to be happy with it, and you can take your helpful commentary elsewhere.”

“Don’t work yourself to the ground, Bev,” Jones smirked, walking out of the command room..

 

 

 

 

Three days behind schedule, they managed a normal manual start up. It had required the kind of rerouting process Hannah wasn’t used to, and she warned Hammond that they’d need to possibly strip the workarounds and start from the beginning before Romeo Blue was safe for action.

“It’s the equivalent of quarantining a virus,” she said. “Except it’s not like any virus I’ve seen and I can’t even confirm where the affected file is located.”

“As long as it’s secure for pilot testing, I don’t care,” Hammond said firmly. “If we can get past that, we might be able to secure a wider budget. Then you can play around as much as you want.”

 

 

 

 

 

The pilots chosen were a married couple fresh out of the academy. Mallorie and Callum Richardson had lost both of their children to the Kaiju War. It made them perfect candidates for Romeo Blue, willing to do almost anything to play their part in the battle.

They stood quietly in their circuitry suits in the drivesuit room as the technicians buzzed around them, assembling the armour. Mallorie reached for her husband’s hand, squeezing it reassuringly.

Officer Hannah had shown them around Romeo’s Conn-Pod, getting them acquainted with the equipment. Mallorie pulled down the cradle, setting the switches to test mode. She tried to hide her nervousness as she stepped into the hydraulic rig, her boots locking into place firmly.

“This is what we’ve been training for,” Callum said, voice hard as he looked to her, blue eyes shining in the dim light of the Pod. She smiled at him and nodded, and knew they were both thinking of their little daughters.

The communications line came to life. “Airlocks are secure. LOCCENT confirming uplink.”

Mallorie pulled down the diagnostics board and flicked on the microphone. A mechanic came up to her to hook her up to the feedback cradle, before moving on to Callum.

“Ready to engage pilot-to-pilot control,” Mallorie announced, eyes following the information on the neural drift enabler display.

“Copy that, Romeo. The neural load will be more than you’re used to in training and simulations, so you’ll need to stay focused and away from the RABITs.”

“Noted,” Mallorie said, and turned to Callum to catch him rolling his eyes. She winked at him.

“For the sake of energy conservation and uncompleted circuits, we’re keeping weapons and navigational systems offline,” Officer Hannah reminded them. “It’ll lessen the strain on your synapses too.”

“Main objective, LOCCENT?” Mallorie asked.

“To establish a stable neural bridge to the Jaeger interface, frankly,” came the response. “If that goes well, once we’re ready, you’ll get to start training with the whole Jaeger functional.”

“Looking forward to it.”

“Alright, initiating pilot-to-pilot control sequence. Get ready, Romeo.”

Mallorie looked at Callum and saw the same determination she felt in herself reflected on her husband’s face. “Ready?” she asked. He gave her a nod, his mouth pursed into a thin line.

The HUD lit up with brain biology scans, and the LOCCENT control announcement echoed in the Conn-Pod. “ _Initiating neural handshake._ ”

Mallorie closed her eyes and prepared herself, trying to clear her mind. Nothing prepared her for the burst that followed - it was like her mind was being fractured, and then knitted together with memories that weren’t hers - she caught a glimpse of their firstborn, a memory foreign to her, and had to force herself to let it go, to let the flashes of thoughts and sentiments stream by.

 _Hold on, honey_ , she thought, and felt the distant presence of her husband, felt him grasp on to her reassurement and cling to it.

For a short moment her thoughts focused into one condensed moment, her senses overloading - and then it felt as though she was being spat out back into her own head. Except there was a new sense of focus and calm in her, and she felt an extension of herself - being in a constant loop with Callum, and it felt natural, as though it was always supposed to be like this.

She looked towards Callum and she was looking at herself, like mirrors set opposite to each other. Neither of them could stop grinning. She wanted to say how amazing she felt, but she didn’t need to - he was in her head and she was in his.

Officer Hannah’s laugh bubbled up the intercom. “You are in alignment. Congratulations Rangers, you just popped you neural bridge cherry.”

Mallorie and Callum laughed, a joyful sound of revelation. No simulator could compare to the real thing.

“Alright then,” Officer Hannah said. “Calibrating hemispheres.”

The diagram of the right side pilot brain lit up as Mallorie raised her hand, stabilising the cradle and performing the required motion sequence. “ _Right hemisphere calibrated_ ,” LOCCENT control announced. From the corner of her eye Mallorie saw, but more than that she was aware in her mind, of Callum completing his sequence.

“ _Left hemisphere calibrated. Calibration complete._ ”

“Piece of cake,” Callum quipped, and Mallorie poked her tongue out at him. She could feel his excitement welling, merging into her own mix of emotions.

“Good work,” Officer Hannah complimented them. “Let’s get this shown on the road then.”

Mallorie reached to the diagnostics board, typing in the Jaeger initiation sequence. The HUD flashed with Romeo’s schematics, giving her the vital statistics. Something flashed at the edge of her consciousness, but it felt dulled, like speech through thick walls. She opened her mouth to ask Callum if he felt it, when a searing pain tore through her mind, sending a convulsion through her body.

She heard Callum calling her name, and she wasn’t sure if it was in her head.

 

 

“ _Right hemisphere recalibrating,_ ” the computer announced, drawing Hannah’s attention just as Callum Richardson screamed his wife’s name.

She heard the marshall swear behind her as the right side pilot brain scan lit up and Richardson’s vital stats shot through the roof.

“Right hemisphere calibrated.”

“Fix it,” Hammond hissed in her ear, his chest pressed close to her shoulder.

“I don’t know what the fuck’s going on,” she said frantically, watching as the computer kept giving her more information that didn’t make any goddamn sense.

“Look at her brain scan,” she shouted. The neural load percentages kept rising beyond what was possible - 129%, 148%... it kept climbing until it reached 200% and then it crashed down back to 100% as Mallorie’s vitals went offline.

“LOCCENT, what the fuck is going on in here, fucking do something,” Callum was screaming, voice desperate. The computer notified them of his hand controller disengaging, and it was clear he was attempting to free himself to help his wife.

“ _Calibrating left hemisphere._ ”

“Take them offline, now officer,” Hammond roared, but Hannah was already reaching for the failsafe shutdown as Callum’s percentages started to rise.

Romeo Blue’s interface screens went black as she punched the failsafe button with her fist. She pressed the intercom switch. “Romeo Blue, come in. Rangers Richardson, please respond!”

She was met with silence.

“Medical personnel to Jaeger bay 4,” she heard behind her, and looked over her shoulder to see Hammond at the comm system. “Let’s go,” he snarled at her, and sprinted towards the elevator.

 

 

 

The Conn-Pod was dark and silent when they entered it. Hammond reached for the power switch and the HUDs burst to life, filling the cockpit with a green glow.

“Jesus fuck,” Hannah breathed. The mechanic beside her staggered back and retched.

Mallorie Richardson hung limply from her motion harness like a morbid ragdoll. The back of her helmet had caved in, as though it had overheated to the point of bursting and melting away. Her eyes were bright red in their sockets, the veins burst from the excessive neural load. Blood dripped from her nose and down the dark blue of her drivesuit armour.

“He’s breathing,” Hammond called from where he was kneeling over Callum’s crumpled form. Hannah rushed to them, feeling for pulse under the suit’s neck lining. The pilot’s heart was rabbiting under her fingertips. His helmet was showing signs of overheating, the metal warped and hot to the touch. They turned him over gently, and Hannah recoiled.

Callum’s pink-tinted eyes were open, moving rapidly back and forth, unseeing. Blood was smeared under his nose, a red line of blood disappearing into the lining of his suit.

“Officer Hannah,” a familiar voice came from her side, and she tried to quell the nausea before standing up and turning away from Callum.

“What is it, Jones,” she snapped, turning to look. He was pointing awkwardly, his hand shaking slightly, at the HUD.

“ _Hemisphere calibration complete. Neural bridge stable. Ready to deploy,_ ” it displayed.

In the right hand corner of the screen were the pilot login IDs.

_R-BGAGE_154.43-K  
R-TGAGE_759.42-F_

 

 

 

 

 

 

“What’s our official statement, sir?”

Marshall Hammond rubbed his eyes and looked Hannah. The Secretary-General was staring at him impassively from the screen.

“Official statement will be that Romeo Blue’s equipment was too far damaged in the fight that took down Bruce and Trevin Gage. Corrupted circuitry and compromised safety elements were the main factors in the death of Mallorie Richardson and the brain damage found in Callum Richardson.” He gave Hannah a hard look. “Have your people spin it into something printable.”

She glanced towards the screen, hesitating. “Sir… Aren’t we going to mention the…” she floundered. “What happened wasn’t an equipment malfunction!” She looked pleading at the Secretary-General. “We can’t just sweep what happened under the rug - for a moment two people were sharing Mallorie Richardson’s right brain hemisphere before her brain essentially overloaded because of the pressure the Pons was putting on her synapses! Are we just going-”

“Officer Hannah!” She looked shakily at the screen. The Secretary-General’s voice was unyielding when he spoke. “As far as I understand, you and your crew have been unable to determine what caused the neural overload in the Richardsons. If you think I’m going to let you piss on the careful work we have been doing these past few months to save the image of the Jaeger Program in the United States with your half-assed theories, you’re out of your goddamn mind.”

“Sir, with all due respect, we can’t just ignore this. There is nothing in the history of drift technology that explains this; it’s our duty to investigate this thoroughly!”

Hammond sighed. “Half the J-Techs are too spooked to even step into that Conn-Pod, and you haven’t found anything in the interface that explains the source of the… anomalies-”

Hannah snorted. “So that’s it? That’s the most we’ll tell officials?”

“You’re not telling them anything,” the Secretary-General growled. “Not if you want to work another day of your life in this industry. Do you understand?” He glared at them both. Hannah nodded, numbly.

“Yessir,” Hammond said, and rose from his seat. The video feed cut out, and he slumped, bracing his palms flat on the table.

“Make sure your crew doesn’t leak this.”

 

 

 

 

 

Hannah sat by her desk, staring at the draft of the “official” statement, when someone knocked on her door.

“Come in,” she called, and looked up to see Jones stepping inside.

“You leaving?” she asked, angling her screen more away from the door.

Jones shrugged. “Yeah. Time for a change of scenery. That fucking thing keeps giving me the creeps every time I walk past the bay. Mammoth Apostle’s crew is talking about a curse.”

Hannah rolled her eyes. “You know as well as I do that whatever happened wasn’t a curse. It had to be something to do with the programming or… or something.”

Jones leaned his hip against her desk, pursing his lips. “Do I? You haven’t managed to find a trace of it since the drift trial.”

“Yeah, because they won’t let me turn it on! If they’d let me do a dry run on it, maybe it would show up again-”

“I don’t think they really care about the truth all that much,” Jones said, fiddling with a frog-pen in the pencil holder. “What happened is just going to reinforce the code of conduct when it comes to pilots inheriting Jaegers.” He lifted his hands and inserted fingerquotes on “inheriting”. “They’re scared of the professional and media backlash. If I were you, I’d start looking for a new job before they come up with a reason to sweep you under the rug too,” he said, leaning closer and raising his eyebrows meaningfully.

“You’re a shit, Jones,” Hannah said, but she gave him a weary smile. He smiled at her, and then patted his thighs. “Alright. My transport’s about to leave.” He pushed himself off her desk and marched to the door.

“Hey Robert,” she called after him. He turned around, grinning, and waited.

“Stay out of trouble,” she smirked, and threw the frog pen at him. He caught it clumsily and popped it in his breast pocket.

“Copy that,” he said, saluting her sloppily. He paused with his grip on the door handle. “What’s gonna happen to Romeo Blue?”

Hannah stared at her screen, a pained look on her face. “Assigned to Oblivion Bay.”


	2. Gipsy Danger: The Drift is Silence

Mako had watched Gipsy Danger be brought into the Shatterdome, its towering bulk covered in grime. The water damage was visible from far off, and the gaping hole in her right side was a stark testament to the battle with Knifehead. It was a depressing sight, and knowing she’d be in charge of getting her back in shape didn’t help.

She stayed out of the J-Tech crew’s way as much as possible, letting what remained of Gipsy’s crew do their work. She concentrated her own efforts into working with the engineers, defining the installation configurations for the pilot programs, operating system and drivesuits.

Watching the Jaeger looming in its old bay, one arm torn off and half the Conn-Pod ripped open, Mako felt like the Marshall had bitten off more than they could chew. She hadn’t realised the size of the project until she saw Gipsy in person. They were grasping at straws now, however, and unless they could get Gipsy into a pilotable shape, the whole resistance was in danger of coming crashing down.

“No pressure or anything,” Tendo had said as they pored over the program diagnostics. “Survival of our species hinges on this, total piece of cake.”

“On us restoring a Jaeger missing a limb, and on Raleigh Becket not turning the Marshall down,” Mako had said wearily.

“I’ll be surprised if Raleigh doesn’t tell Pentecost to shove his proposition where the sun don’t shine,” Tendo said dryly.

Mako gave him a strained smile.

 

 

 

 

It took the Conn-Pod engineer crew months to fix the structural damage done to the cockpit. Mako supervised the repairs, juggling the structure designs, updates to Gipsy’s nuclear turbines, and software overhauls. She kept a careful log of the repairs and updates, stretching her work days by going over the details and adding improvements where there was room for them. She didn’t want Gipsy just to be repaired - she wanted her even better than she’d been.

The main body of the Jaeger wasn’t anywhere close to finished when the Conn-Pod was deemed structurally operational. The J-Tech team did a complete reinstallation of Gipsy’s system software, lead by Tendo, with Mako monitoring carefully. As the installations ran late, eventually most of the crew started trickling out. Only the skeleton crew remained.

Mako sat down with Tendo and spent several boring hours uploading data and configurations into the newly installed interface. Mako had sweet-talked the chef working the night shift in the mess hall into handing them a stock of coffee and snacks.

They sat quietly by the control panels, only occasionally commenting on progress and making notes in the restoration log. Neither of them felt like talking. Mako propped her chin on her hand and wondered what would happen if Raleigh Becket didn’t agree to the Marshall’s proposal.

 

 

The computer gave an abrupt, curt beep and they both leaned in for a closer look.

“ _Unable to set up user profiles_.”

“Uh,” Tendo said, pressing a few keys one-handed, his left hand holding on to his donut stubbornly.

Mako scrunched her nose. “Can you override it manually?”

Tendo sighed and started typing commands, watching the HUD as it processed. Another error box popped up.

“ _Unable to override existing profile_.”

“...the hell?” Tendo took a slurp of his coffee and sat up straighter. “I’m not losing to a damn program,” he grumbled. Mako smirked, but decided to keep her comments to herself.

A few minutes of vigorous tapping went by, and another message flashed in front of them.

“ _Existing profile found. Delete user ID R-YBEC_524.25-M?_ ”

“That’s weird,” Mako frowned. “We already deleted it once.”

Tendo shrugged, stuck his donut in his mouth, and confirmed the command.

“ _Unable to override existing profile_ ,” announced the display screen.

Tendo growled around the donut. Mako reached for it and plopped it down on a napkin. “Manners,” she said. “Maybe we should take a break.”

Tendo rubbed his hand over his face. “You know what, let’s just roll with this. I’ll set up a third profile to use and leave Yancy’s for now. Not like it can be activated anymore...”

Mako nodded. They let the upload continue and fell back into silence, system output running on the screen steadily.

 

 

 

 

The Marshall gave them the green light to testing the neural connection the next day. They took the dominant pilot offline and left only the essential programs running.

Mako felt giddy as she put on the circuit suit and stood still as the drivesuit was assembled around her. It wasn’t a real drop, and not much different from a simulator when it came to the mechanics, but it was _Gipsy Danger_. It felt significant: a childhood dream come true. She waited patiently as the relay gel settled and crossed the bridge to the Conn-Pod. It was still in pieces, and she could see the Jaeger bay through the hole on the right pilot’s side. The motion harness Yancy Becket had been ripped from had been replaced, but the evidence of what had happened to him was still carved into the cockpit wall.

She settled into the motion harness easily, and let the technician finish hooking her up. It wasn’t much different from the simulator used at the Academy, though the design of Gipsy’s Conn-Pod was different. It felt more open, though she knew it wasn’t really much bigger at all. All Jaeger cockpits had similar basic designs, but Gipsy had always held a special place in her heart. Even moreso now that she knew her inside and out by heart, had put so much of herself into bringing her back to life.

Mako tried to not let herself get carried away. Gipsy would be stripped of most of her functions, and establishing a neural connection would be much easier than if the situation was real. She wanted to establish that the neural pathways functioned, to make sure they could carry on with repairs on schedule. Full testing would have to be done by Raleigh Becket and his copilot.

“We’re initiating the neural interface control program now,” Tendo said, his voice as clear as if he was in the Conn-Pod with her. “You’ll feel the Pons activate, you might feel slightly disoriented. This stuff wasn’t really optimised for solo use.”

Mako felt a spike of energy travel through her body in a rough jolt, and suddenly her surroundings seemed sharper, as though she was more aware of herself.

“ _Solo neural link established_ ,” the polite computer voice told her, and the HUD lit up with statistics. Her user profile activated, and she accessed the data files, looking for anomalies.

Everything seemed fine, when Tendo spoke up sharply. “Mako, the right side is activating. Did you send the command?”

She glanced to her right just as the dominant display screen lit up.

“Logging in profile,” it read.

Mako tried to override the command, but the system gave no response or any sign of acknowledgement. “What’s going on?”

“I don’t know. It won’t let me terminate the second- What the…” Tendo trailed off, and Mako could see why.

“R-YBEC_524.25-M login successful. Initiating pilot neural bridge,” the system said.

“Mako, I’m trying to terminate but it’s telling me the dominant pilot is established.”

“ _Neural bridge failed. Would you like to try again?_ ”

There was a pause, and Mako could hear Tendo swear in her ear, “No, damnit, we don’t!” before the computer announced again, “Initiating neural bridge.”

“Tendo, can you fix this? There has to be a glitch in Yancy’s profile,” Mako said, trying to track the data moving on her screen.

“I can’t pinpoint it! It’s claiming the command came from the right hand pilot but that makes no sense! I’m gonna try to-”

Whatever Tendo was going to try was lost by Mako. There was a flash in her mind, similar to what the drift initiation had been described to her, but there was no sense of connection, no uniting memories, no second awareness. She was alone in her head. But she could see - her brain told her she was seeing - a man in a white drivesuit tapping at the control panel, entering data, before turning to face Mako...

Another jolt, and the man was gone. Her mind flashes again, and he was there, tapping at the display before starting to turn- and then gone again. It repeated, the few seconds of action looping in Mako’s mind like a jumpy video feed, and then she heard Tendo.

“Mako, I’m initiating emergency shut down, this might hurt.”

She braced herself as Tendo began a short countdown.

When he hit zero, the vision to her right whirled to face her, frantically this time. “ _Raleigh, listen to me, you have to-_ ”

Mako was bathed in darkness as the Conn-Pod shut down.

 

Mako felt impatient as she squirmed out of the drive suit with the aid of the techs. She was shaken, but irritation overrode the sensation - she didn’t believe in ghosts, and the idea that she and Tendo had missed something big in the programming phase nagged at her. Tendo found her quickly and dragged her to the command centre, plopping her into a chair and handing her a cup of steaming coffee. She took a sip and tasted the spoonfuls of sugar Tendo must’ve dumped in.

She braced her forehead on her hands and squeezed her eyes shut. She could still see Yancy Becket standing next to her, entering commands over and over.

“What happened?” she asked softly. Tendo shook his head, running his hand through his gelled hair.

“I don’t know. Nothing in the program explains it. I’d understand Yancy’s profile being offered as an option, but…”

Mako nodded. “The login passwords aren’t saved in the interface and have to be entered manually.”

“Yeah.”

They sat in silence, staring at Gipsy’s collected data running on the screen.

 

 

 

 

The Marshall wasn’t happy when he heard the news. He questioned the professional skills of their programmers, and then demanded that in the future an AI would be used to test Gipsy. Mako reluctantly agreed, but she knew when to pick her fights. Besides, she wasn’t eager to encounter Yancy Becket’s spectre again.

They ran three more tests with the AI pilot, and each time Yancy logged on and attempted to establish a connection with his copilot’s side. While now there was nothing to see, the sight of Yancy’s profile activating was enough to make the hair on Mako’s neck stand on end.

They put together a J-Tech team to work with them to overwrite line after line of code, but it didn’t seem to change anything. Mako was starting to feel the pressure build. Even if Gipsy was technically operational, if it malfunctioned again it could send their pilots violently out of alignment. It wasn’t a risk she wanted to take.

One evening as Mako was going through the Conn-Pod’s structure, her attention was drawn to the motion harnesses. They were new, but the receptors that transmitted data from the Pons and the feedback cradle had only been given basic maintenance.

Tendo was asleep when she went to find him, mumbling unintelligibly as she dragged him up.

“I’m not speaking to you before you get me a breakfast muffin and coffee,” he grumbled as she she hurried at him to get dressed.

“Get to LOCCENT and start running Gipsy’s Conn-Pod up. I’ll get you your coffee; please just hurry. I think I know what the problem with Gipsy is.”

 

 

 

 

 

_Excerpt from diagnostic report by Head of Mark III Restoration Project Mako Mori_   
  


_...the Pons collects and encodes tremendous amounts of data from the pilots’ brains and sends it to two destinations; the LOCCENT, and the Jaeger’s interface._

_In instances where one or both pilots die, the violent fluctuations in or complete cessation of hemisphere functions may cause serious harm to Jaeger programming. As a result, some repeated functions, codes, or strong neural impulses may get stored permanently into Jaeger memory and neural sensors. A full system reinstallation will prove uneffective in these cases._

_It is possible that these codes or functions conflict with software upgrades and cause neural echoes in pilot feedback: random access memory impulse triggers, projections of previous pilots, or even functional system commands. These are unprogrammed automations and point to a potentially serious malfunction which may lead to failure in the neural connection._

_In case of a Jaeger relaunch, due to the complicated anatomy of forming the neural link, it is recommended that all sensory equipment relevant to the pilot-to-Jaeger interface is replaced after significant damage to cockpit to eliminate possible neural echoes when the Jaeger is active._


	3. Cherno Alpha: Fortune Favours The Brave

In the dark hours of the early morning, most inhabitants of the Hong Kong Shatterdome slept in their beds. Without the clock ticking down to the next imminent attack, sleep came easy for the first time in over a decade. The vacant halls, and more importantly, deserted Jaeger bay and docks were exactly what the quiet newcomers hoped for.

A small group lingered in the LOCCENT, staring down at the figures hurrying in the dark, moving to and fro, guided only by their headlamps and the light of nearby cutting torches .

“This isn’t right,” Raleigh said finally. He crossed his arms over his chest as he looked away from the window. Mako spared him a glance from where she too leaned against the window pane, before returning it back to observe the steady stream of workers bringing soaking wet, colossal hunks of metal into the bay. A bit farther from the window, Herc stood stiff, back straight and hands in his pockets. He didn’t respond, instead inclining his head slightly and taking a breath, as he too stared below. Getting no response, Raleigh clenched his jaw and turned back to the window again.

The tiny figures brought another large trailer through the bay doors. Atop the worn wooden bed sat the warped, and mangled, yet recognizable rectangular Conn-Pod that once sat in the chest of the massive Mark I Jaeger, Cherno Alpha.

With a sharp inhale, Raleigh stepped back. Judging from the rustling sound off to his side, Mako had seen it too. “They can’t do this,” he snapped, but immediately bit his tongue when he saw the acting marshall’s weary glare.

“We can’t stop them either,” Herc stated. “Cherno,” he started, “Is and always was theirs. We can’t claim it.”

“But this-”

“Becket,” Herc said. It was a warning but there was no venom, no bite to it, as Herc kept his eyes trained on the Jaeger bay floor. The crew crawled on top of the remains of the Conn-Pod and traced out marks of where to cut into the thick plating. Raleigh gritted his teeth, grinding from side to side before, he shook his head.

“I can’t watch this,” he growled, at no one in particular, and exited the LOCCENT in long, harried strides.

For a moment, Herc opened his mouth as he watched Raleigh leave, but realized he didn’t know what to say. Maybe he had nothing more to say at all. So instead he moved toward the window. Mako watched him approach, her eyes following his.

“He’ll be alright,” she said, and he nodded slightly, taking her word for it. They both observed for a while longer in silence, before Herc bowed his head a bit.

“Didn’t want to say it in front of Raleigh but… Cherno might not be the last Jaeger to be reclaimed,” he said. Mako glanced at him out of the corner of her eye but did not move, nor did she respond, instead waiting for him to finish. “If it turns out alright, the Chinese are coming back for Crimson.” They both went quiet again as Mako digested the information and stared down at the scene below. Herc rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly and sighed. "If I didn't find it so damn disrespectful, I'd almost call it clever, letting the Russians do it first," he admitted, the words hanging in the air as they went silent once again.

They looked down at the working crew and stood quietly, alone in the LOCCENT, watching.

 

 

The night crews finished dismantling the remains of the Jaeger, cleaned it just enough, and loaded it onto a small fleet of mostly emptied out aircraft carriers. Soon enough, they were out of the PPDC’s hands and on their way.

As each carrier lined up and docked in its turn at the Vladivostok Shatterdome, the dock workers cataloged and reported the offloaded cargo: two hydraulic pistons, a long piece of crooked metal here, a solid, massive lump of grey steel larger than the average car there.

The dock workers went quiet when the crane set the half crumpled head of the once towering Jaeger down onto the dock,. They finished unloading the broken down parts of Russia’s own Cherno Alpha, steering them inside the dome and away from the frosty docks. Once all parts were moved to the first Jaeger station, armed soldiers ushered the dock workers out, retreated back inside, and rolled the hangar bay doors closed behind them.

The next day the Vladivostok Shatterdome came back to life. Scores of people, Jaeger technicians, mechanics, and engineers were flown in, as well as support personnel to supplement the skeleton crew that had taken over the facility after the PPDC transitioned it over to the Russian government. Few crews had dared to reactivate Jaegers as decimated as this and only one had been successful.

Repairs progressed. The team pieced the scattered parts of the broken Jaeger back together. Though the power supply had not yet been replaced, Cherno Alpha stood tall, if incomplete and headless, docked in its station and supported by heavy metal struts.

The loud whining of drills and the tinny thud of metal against metal echoed about the old Conn-Pod, surrounding the techs inside and drowning out most idle conversation. The crew engineer, Frolov by name but quietly called “mini-boss” for his short stature and constant prodding demands, stood on the structural beams just in front of where the pilots’ rigs would have been, had they not been ripped out.

Robert, a veteran Jaeger tech, couldn’t vouch for when the two harnesses were removed. They were missing when he’d first set foot in the Pod, back when it was fresh from its journey along the coast, still smelling of the ship’s diesel fuel and in an utter state of disarray. Robert wished the state of the Jaeger shocked him. But it didn’t. Instead he set down his toolbox and went to work.

Frolov hovered over the control panel, running his fingers over every cable and connection, tracing them with narrowed eyes. Getting the control panel back up and running was a top priority, and though the rest of the Pod was not yet fixed, the task was nearly completed. Frolov straightened up and put a hand on his hip, looking around at the techs scurrying about.

He cleared his throat and asked “Are we connected to auxiliary shore power?” The techs paused and looked at each other. After a brief silence, Frolov cleared his throat again.

“No; you need it?” the younger tech finally replied. Frolov stared, frozen in place with his hand on his hip.

“If it’s not too much trouble,” he snipped and glared as the younger tech climbed out of the Conn-Pod to comply. Frolov pinched the bridge off his nose and muttered something in a language Robert didn’t know, but recognized as most likely Russian. He ignored it, grabbed a replacement cable from his box, and began threading it through the bulkheads to replace the frayed and snapped one he’d just removed.

“Ready for aux power?” the younger tech’s voice echoed into the Conn-Pod from outside over the rest of the noise.

“Ready,” Frolov shouted his reply back, hand still on hip, as he stared at the dark control panel. “Let’s see where we’re at, shall we?” he asked, although as far as Robert could tell he directed it at the control panel and not anyone else.

Blinking red, amber, and green indicators flickered on and flashed; the first sign of life in the old Mark I Jaeger. Warning, after warning scrolled down the screen each time the operating system failed to connect to a piece of hardware. The fact that the system files remained intact enough to boot was astonishing.

Frolov was about to proclaim something when the entire Conn-Pod filled with a loud, deep and reverberating drumbeat, echoing throughout and shaking the whole structure.

“The fucking hell?!” Frolov wasn’t the only one that cursed, and clamped his hands over his ears, but he did stumble back and fall into the pilot rig hydraulics pit. Persistent, distorted synth riffs shook the Conn-Pod and sent tools bouncing and vibrating across the beams and floor panels. Robert swore he could feel the beat in his teeth and chest as he pressed his hands even harder over his ears. Even over the near deafening, discordant beat, he could hear far away shouting from above and below the Pod.

“The fuck is that?” “Turn that shit off!”

Frolov screamed what Robert could gather must have been a nice string of profanities at the top of his lungs this time as he scrambled out of the hydraulics pit and reached for the control panel.

“Quit fucking around!” someone called into the Conn-Pod as well.

“I’m trying, god damn it!” Frolov snapped back as he searched the control panel. Debug messages still streamed down the screen no matter how hard he tapped, poked, or prodded it, and none of the buttons or switches seemed to respond either. Finally, on his hands and knees, he found a small slot and a button. He pressed the button in and a tiny card jutted out. He yanked it out and the pounding stopped just as suddenly as it had started, leaving the startled crew in the quiet.

With a triumphant yell, Frolov stood up, but his excitement quickly fizzled out and Robert saw why immediately. The control panel had gone completely dark again.

“What the…?” the engineer half whined, half yelled as he knocked the side of the bulky control panel with his palm, but it didn’t flare back to life. Just then someone else, the Commander of the Vladivostok Shatterdome, overseer of the facility since the PPDC repatriated it, and manager of repair operations, climbed into the Pod.

“What the fuck just happened?” he demanded, looking around at the tech and engineer scattered on the floor panels. Frolov held up the tiny card, and opened his mouth, but no sound came out at first, leaving him gaping like a fish. He looked back at the control panel before returning his attention to his waiting supervisor.

“I’m not quite sure,” he started out but quickly continued when he saw the look on the Commander’s face. “We just turned on the control panel and the-I guess the system was still configured to automatically play the music on the media card. I took out the card and the whole damn thing shut down,” the words tumbled out of the engineer’s mouth in a rush. “There must be a short somewhere…” he added, muttering as almost an aside. Robert felt his heart slowing to a normal pace, but his eardrums throbbed. The Commander did not appear amused, and instead pointed to Frolov.

“Fix it,” he commanded, and left the way he came. The engineer muttered a low string of curses as he settled back, glaring at the control panel. Robert immediately returned to his cabling, hoping to finish it before Frolov ordered they take the control panel apart to find the short.

 

 

 

 

Cherno Alpha’s crew finally obtained its new power source and connected it to the rest of the Mark I’s power infrastructure. One of the major planned upgrades took advantage of the space left after upgrading the power source: escape pods for the two new pilots.

Cherno Alpha’s crew had already roughed out the structural fittings for the chutes in the back of the Conn-Pod by the time the assembled escape pods arrived in the night. Robert finished his morning meal in the mess about the same time the rest of the crew was getting in and he headed into the Jaeger bay to begin preparation for the day’s work. Frolov would want to start the install right away, and would pitch a fit if the techs weren’t ready.

After the escape pods had been mounted, secured, and connected into both physical and digital structures of Cherno Alpha. Frolov crouched before one of the pods, inspecting it, as he did everything. Robert and another fellow tech stood aside and watched, awaiting instruction. Satisfied, Frolov stood and turned to face the two techs.

“Ready to test these out?” he asked the obvious.

“All set,” Robert replied and Frolov clapped his hands together.

“Shore power?” he ordered in the form of a question, and the other tech scrambled out.

After a few moments, the out of sight tech called, “Ready for shore power?”

“Hit it,” Frolov yelled as he stepped towards the control panel. The now customary lights flickered on and the display lit up and began relaying message after message as the OS initialized its subsystems. A loud POP from behind them made Frolov and Robert both jump and drop to the ground. Spinning around on their hands and knees, they turned just in time to see sparks burst from the bottoms of the escape pods with another POP and a CRACK.

“Cut the power!! Cut it!” “Turn it off!” both Robert and Frolov yelled at the top of their lungs. The machinery around them powered down with a whirr and the sparks and flashes stopped.

“Fucking hell,” Frolov muttered and got to his feet, quickly moving over to inspect the damage. The other tech burst into the Pod with a fire extinguisher poised and ready. “Nuh-uh-uh, stop,” Frolov commanded the tech, holding out one hand to stop him. The other tech backed up, and Frolov fanned the smoke rising from the base of the escape pod. Robert quickly came up beside him and peered into the gap between the escape pod and its shaft. “What voltage did you hook this up to?” Frolov demanded.

“The one on the specs,” Robert said. Frolov looked at him and Robert knew the engineer didn’t believe him.

“Show me,” Frolov said, stood up, and walked over to the control panel, rubbing his face. Robert hurried to disconnect one of the escape pods while the other tech did the same with the other. Robert hooked the power cables up to diagnostic equipment he pulled out of his toolbox. After one last check to make sure that the escape pods were completely disconnected from the power, they turned it back on. Frolov watched as the expected power levels displayed on the equipment and he grunted in confusion. He shook his head. “There must be something wrong with the connectors then-” He immediately stopped as the needle jumped to twice the power it was supposed to read.

“What the fuck,” Robert exclaimed. “It didn’t do that yesterday; I swear to God. The power stayed nice and clean.”

“I-hold on,” Frolov stammered and went back over to study the output on the control panel. “Huh, did you touch this?” he asked after a moment.

“No,” Robert replied quickly and straightened up.

“It’s set to double the power output to the escape pods upon initialization,” Frolov said almost angrily and began to tap out commands on the control pane. Eventually the test equipment’s needle fell back down to the appropriate level. Frolov gave the go ahead and they powered everything down and reconnected the escape pods.

This time Robert stood in front of the escape pods with the fire extinguisher and Frolov stood watch over the control panel’s display as the other tech enabled auxiliary shore power.The control panel lit up and they waited.The escape pods didn’t start overloading again, but Robert heard an indignant “what?!” behind him and could hear Frolov begin tapping commands into the control panel again.

“Is it trying to reset the power again?” Robert asked.

“No, it-” Frolov started, and spat out a curse under his breath, “It’s saying the escape pods are incompatible, but they were custom made for this Jaeger specifically,” he seethed. The other tech came in and he and Robert exchanged knowing glances as they leaned back and waited for Frolov to finish his fiddling.

Hours later the escape pods still weren’t working. First it was the power, then it was the firmware, then they weren’t recognized at all, and when finally it appeared to be working, the software kept trying to initiate the launch sequence immediately after initialization. They almost hadn’t cut the power in time to stop it.

Frolov ran and hand through his hair, muttering his litany of Russian curses. By now Robert could probably recite them. He watched as Frolov got up and moved over to the escape pods to stare at them, as if willing them to tell him what was wrong. He bent closer and stuck his head almost between the escape pod and its shaft. He sniffed. He sighed and returned to the control panel. The other tech looked at his watch and Robert didn’t miss the motion. He cleared his throat and the engineer looked at him as if he only just realized they were still there.

“What do you say we go get some dinner? Clear your mind, and come back with a fresh start?” Robert suggested and the engineer only looked at him. He blinked a few times and shook his head.

“You two go ahead,” he said, and returned to the control panel. The other tech quickly left but Robert lingered a moment longer.

“Suit yourself,” he said eventually, and went to the mess without Frolov.

 

 

 

 

The next morning Robert finished his breakfast as normal and went to the Jaeger bay, only to discover the lights already on. He picked up his toolbox and went immediately to the Conn-Pod as he had countless times before. He realised for once he wasn’t there first. Frolov and the Commander stood toe to toe before the pilots’ harnesses.

“So you can’t do it?” the Commander asked, with no small edge to his voice.

“That’s not what I said,” Frolov said with a hand on his hip again, glancing from the floor to the Commander, to the escape pods, and back to the Commander. “There is something wrong. I don’t know what and no matter how many ways I tweak the drivers, or the configuration files, add shielding, or insulation, they won’t work,” Frolov stated loudly and the Commander stared.

“So what are your suggestions?” he asked, after a brief pause.

“At this point,” Frolov started, “either we rebuild the entire OS and test it with the hardware in a lab so we are certain it will be compatible with the new systems or we scrap the escape pods,” he said with no joy.

The Commander stared at him hard. “We payed good money for those pods,” he said quietly.

“I know,” Frolov said. “But as they are, we can’t use them.”

“I thought they were supposed to be compatible,” the Commander said, his voice rising.

“Some systems just won’t work together easily,” Frolov replied. The Commander didn’t blink for an inordinate amount of time in Robert’s opinion, but eventually he looked away with a huff.

“So you can’t do it?” he asked again and Frolov nearly wailed.

“If you want to throw a ton of more money into it and at our engineers back home, yes, make a new OS, give us time to separate the systems here, and replace more of the legacy parts, and it’ll be great.”

“We can’t do that.”

“Then we can’t have escape pods,” Frolov said flatly and glared up at the Commander with puffy red eyes.

The Commander seemed to chew on that for a bit and noticed Robert standing just on the other side of the entry way. He set his jaw and brushed passed Frolov. “Then we won’t have escape pods,” he muttered. “I want this Jaeger up and running next week then, do you understand me?” he called as he left, ignoring Robert and leaving both the tech and engineer in stunned silence.

Cherno Alpha’s crew scrambled to remove the escape pods with grim acceptance and sealed the chutes shut with blank panels. They had a lot to accomplish before the next week.

 

 

 

 

 

Two pilots that arrived to test the Russian Jaeger were escorted by armed guards. Brothers from Siberia. No one seemed to be able to specify where, but no one was about to ask the sharp eyed, gaunt faced men or their entourage.

WIth a deep breath, Robert and another tech waited for the two to get suited up and arrive. They didn’t have to wait long; the brothers soon arrived, accompanied still by their guards. The pilots stepped in and paused, eyes darting everywhere in the Conn-Pod. Most of the panels had been replaced by now, but there were still spots of exposed wires, cables, and pipes. Robert cleared his throat and tried to put on his most reassuring smile.

“Dominant pilot on this side, please,” Robert said, motioning to the rig he stood beside. Both pilots refocused on him and for a moment observed him quietly, but soon enough one stepped towards the other side, and the taller of the two approached.

As Robert began plugging the man in, the pilot broke his silence. “You aren’t Russian?” he asked.

“Ah, no,” Robert replied, forcing out a laugh, as he continued plugging in and latching down the connections. “Sorry.” The pilot tilted his head from side to side, not quite nodding or shaking his head, but he didn’t say anything further, and soon enough Robert fastened the spinal clamp. He helped the pilot pull the helmet down onto his head.

Robert stepped back after one last tug on the pilot’s helmet and shoulders to determine the tentacle like connections were secure, and gave him a nod. On the opposite side of the Conn-Pod, the other tech also finished and they left the pilots to themselves, walking past the guards in silence.

Robert and the other tech joined the crowd gathering on the ground of the bay..

The Shatterdome’s officers, and the engineers watched as the displays began to initialize from inside the LOCCENT.

“Ready to begin?” the Commander asked from his seat.

“Ready,” the voice of the taller brother replied after a moment.

“Remember, this for for real, boys,” the Commander said.

Looking up from the ground of the bay, Robert noticed the guards still stood on the scaffolding on either side of Cherno Alpha and he began to wonder about the pilots. Cherno’s ignition triggered and the power systems roared to life.

Moments later, the Commander reported: “Cherno Alpha, system startup complete; prepare for neural handshake in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1…”

Within the LOCCENT the digital displays of two brains moved towards each other, numbers climbing. “Neural handshake solid and holding,” the Commander said as the displays became one.

“Right hemisphere ready,” the taller brother reported.

“Left hemisphere ready,” the other brother added. Those in the LOCCENT grinned at the numbers and solid lines.

From inside the Conn-Pod, the taller of the two tapped on his HUD. Both brothers settled into an easy stance, clenching their fists. All around them hydraulics relayed their every move, and with a mechanical groan, Cherno did the same.

“Cherno Alpha ready,” the taller brother said. He opened his mouth to continue but something caught the corner of his eye. When he turned his head he gave a start and shrank back. A wall of water rushed towards him; his brother gasped for air and he too began to cough. Something hit them from above and they stumbled, instinctually throwing theirs hands up, clawing at their invisible foe.

“Pilots? Pilots!” the Commander yelled into the comm system. “You’re both way out of alignment; what’s happening? Do not chase the RABIT! Talk to me!”

Gasping, the taller of the two knew something was wrong. This wasn’t his memory, and a separate panic akin to his own at the back of his mind told him it was not his brother’s.

“Neural connection disengage!” he screamed and the operators in the LOCCENT watched as the system complied. The brothers logged out of the system and the power around them shut off entirely.

“What? That-” the Commander stuttered, trying to bring up control again. “I didn’t authorize a shut down,” he muttered. “Pilots, respond; what is your status?” he called. Frolov leaned over the Commander’s shoulder, switched to the Jaeger bay speakers, and shouted into the comm mic.

“Somebody get in there!” Frolov ordered and Robert’s feet were moving maybe even before Frolov stopped talking. He wasn’t quite sure.

The lift crawled its way up the side, while the feeds in the LOCCENT showed the two pilots writhing against the harnesses.

When he reached the Conn-Pod’s level, he slammed the lift’s door open and bolted onto the scaffolding. He was too stunned to yell, too focused to ask questions, as he rushed by the guards standing idly by, and instead he just hurried to the hatch. As soon as it was open enough for him to fit through he was in the Conn-Pod and beside the taller brother in a moment.

The man babbled but Robert didn’t know what to say so instead he worked on freeing the pilot from the straining connections as quickly as he could. He hit the manual release and the visor slid up to reveal wide, furiously blinking eyes. Shortly after, the pilot silenced, instead looking around, muted and simply catching his breath. With a puzzled jolt, he seemed to realize his brother was still shouting beside him. The taller brother called out to him and his voice seemed to bring some comfort for the other brother then quieted too.

Robert recognized a few words from Frolov’s litany as he finished with the taller of the two and turned around to attend the other. One of the other techs arrived then and helped the other brother out of the harness.

Robert turned back around to the taller of the brothers, who had steadied himself on the control panel.

“You okay?” Robert asked and immediately berated himself at the ridiculousness of his own question. The tall man brought his eyes, piercing eyes wider than Robert had ever seen, up to his. After a long moment, punctuated only by the ragged breathing of the brothers, he finally answered.

“Yes,” was all he said, though his voice was tight, before the brothers started talking to each other, quickly. As Robert and the other tech inspected the equipment, the brothers’ conversation escalated, both in speed and volume, until they both shouted the same thing and were nodding at each other furiously when Frolov and the Commander came in.

“What happened?’ the Commander demanded almost as soon as he had entered the Conn-Pod.

“W-what happened?” the shorter of the two pilots echoed. “That’s what we were going to ask!”

“I know drifting in a Jaeger is different that simulation but-”

“That wasn’t the problem,” the taller interrupted the Commander. “That wasn’t a RABIT.” Frolov leaned over the control panel and brought the power back on. After studying the display for a while, he straightened up.

“There’s nothing in the log files to explain any sort of software or firmware issue,” he muttered and the Commander fixed an unimpressed glare on the pilots.

“Care to come again?”

“I’m telling you; it was not us,” the pilot insisted. “Something is wrong; I saw - we both saw - the Conn-Pod _flooding_ and something hit us.”

“Nothing hit you. You went out of alignment.”

“Hang on, what…” Frolov started. “What did you see exactly?”

“It wasn’t so much as… see,” the shorter brother said.

“I saw water… not just water, like if we were sailing on a lake or a-an ocean,” the taller said. “It was coming in the Conn-Pod, and something was… pushing down…”

“Crushing. It was crushing my head,” the shorter one interrupted. Frolov had heard enough. Both the he and the Commander looked at each other, before it was the Commander’s turn to look away cursing.

“It sounds like a neural echo to me,” Robert broke the silence.

“The probability of that is so drastically low… we don’t know that,” the Commander said, but his eyes searched the Conn-Pod instead of staring the tech down.

“One of the posited building blocks of a neural echo is a particularly strong neural impulse,” Frolov stated. He looked like he was about to say more but instead grimaced. The Commander rubbed his face.

“We should call Mako Mori,” Frolov said after a brief pause and the Commander leveled his glare at him, his jaw slack. “She wrote the report on neural echos,” Frolov pointed out. “And a third party might find something we missed,” he added after a moment’s consideration with a sigh. The pilots looked at each other but said nothing.

“The Boss doesn’t want Miss Mori involved,” the Commander stated. “Besides, a person involved in Operation Pitfall, especially a _pilot_ , probably isn’t going to come cheap,” the Commander said after a while.

“Well, we’re kind of out of options at this point, sir,” Frolov said. The Commander grimaced but finally pointed at the taller of the brothers, who jerked away.

“You two,” the Commander said, “back in the simulator now. If you can drift there, we’ll call Miss Mori,” he stated.

Back in the simulator, followed by their mute, armed guards, the Russian pilots drifted perfectly. Their alignment was steady and their synchronization scores were strong. Not even a single hiccup. With a frown, the Commander turned away from the display.

“I’ll call the Boss,” he growled and stormed out of the room.

 

 

 

 

 

The next couple days went by. Cherno Alpha sat idle in its bay.

A light snow was falling when Mako arrived. The last time she’d been in the Vladivostok Shatterdome had been before the PPDC had signed the structure away. She had to admit it looked different. Most of the Jaeger bays were empty, and she even spied what appeared to be fighter jets tucked away in a corner. Cherno stood alone in the first station.

Cherno Alpha’s lead engineer, a man not much taller than Mako herself, waited with a small crew of technicians. He extended his hand when she was close enough and his face broke out into a lopsided grin.

“Miss Mori, an honor to meet you,” he said with a slight accent. She took his hand and judging from the looseness of his grip and the slight twitch of his eyebrows, he wasn’t expecting the firm handshake she gave him.

“A pleasure, Mr. Frolov,” pleasantries dictated she respond, though smiling felt far from easy in the shadow of Cherno Alpha.

“We appreciate your coming out here to help us, Miss. I know you had expressed,” Frolov began, turning towards Cherno. “Your reluctance to assist in the project…”

“I’m not here to join your project, Mr. Frolov,” Mako clarified, careful to keep any edge out of her voice. “I’m here to consult, to evaluate the current situation of Cherno Alpha’s systems, and deliver a recommendation,” she added.

“Of course,” Frolov acquiesced with a slight tilt of his head. “I understand. Still, I appreciate you bringing your expertise and opinion,” he said and took a deep breath, putting his hands on his hips. “I have to admit, this project has been a bit more of a hassle than I’d anticipated. And I thought I’d planned for everything,” he said with an uneasy laugh.

“If what you’re experiencing is a neural echo, standard planning would have done little to prevent it,” Mako replied evenly. “What percentage of the original Jaeger’s systems were you able to reuse?” she asked, and the two looked up at the towering machine in front of them.

“About 88%,” Frolov stated. “Honestly, it wasn’t half as badly banged up as I’d imagined it would be.The damage was mostly isolated to the Conn-Pod and redundant shielding.”

“That’s a lot of legacy hard and wet-ware, Mr. Frolov,” Mako observed and he couldn’t deny it. “What about the operating system?”

“Mostly original,” he admitted and Mako looked at him hard for a moment, but she took it in stride, and returned her gaze to the Jaeger before them.

“I’ll have to talk to the pilots as well,” she said and he was nodding all along.

“Of course, they’ll be in the rec room with their, uh,” he stuttered a bit before he could finally say “escorts,” and earned another odd look from Mako.

“I’d like to get started with the Jaeger, if that’s alright,” Mako suggested and he was nodding again. He waved towards the lift and they climbed in, accompanied by one of the techs. As the lift climbed, Frolov inclined his head toward the tech.

“This is Robert Jones, one of our techs; he’s been mostly working on the Conn-Pod so he’ll probably be able to answer any questions you might have about the repairs and upgrades, if I’m not available.”

“Ma’am,” Robert greeted, as they shook hands. Mako noticed a small frog pen peeping out of his shirt pocket. She smiled a bit at the oddity, but decided to let it go. The three of them stepped off the lift and climbed into the Conn-Pod.

Mako realized she was holding her breath, as she stared at the empty pilots’ rigs, the cradles and harnesses swaying slightly, cables clacking against one another gently. She let it out and stepped towards the control panel.

“We need to start from the ground up, eliminate all possibilities, and go from there,” she said after a while, and powered on the old Jaeger. “What was the first thing that seemed a bit… off?” she asked and both tech and engineer shuffled on their feet to attention.

“The audio system,” Robert supplied and Frolov nodded.

“Music started blasting almost as soon as the OS finished initializing when we first powered up the control systems,” Frolov explained. “When I took the card out, the whole thing shut off.” Mako nodded.

“Did you check the wiring? There weren’t any shorts or anything? Cross wiring? Grounding issues?” she asked.

“No, we checked everything. The audio system was completely independent from the power control lines,” Robert explained and she nodded again.

“Hm,” she responded. “What else?”

“We tried to install escape pods,” Frolov said, with a shrug towards two large panels in the back of the Conn-Pod. “Everything that could go wrong when we were installing them did, and then some. And when they were finally installed and the system actually recognized them, they kept trying to eject at startup.” She tilted her head back slightly at that.

“And you couldn’t interrupt the process?”

“Not without shutting down the power,” Robert supplied.

“Okay, well, we’ll just keep that in mind,” she said. “Anything else?”

 

 

 

 

Hours later, after countless tests, and a rather odd interview with the spooked pilots, Mako, Frolov, and the Commander met together in the Conn-Pod. Robert stood as far off to the side as was possible in the enclosed space. The Commander glared at the control panel, as if it had offended him.

“That’s your official recommendation?” he asked after a period of silence. Both Robert and Frolov looked back at Mako, who stood with her hands bracing her back, sore from the hours of crawling around maintenance tunnels, wiggling into access panels, or hovering over displays all day.

“Yes, it is,” Mako stated. “The repeated rejection of otherwise unrelated but mechanically compatible upgrades, the pilots’ difficulty drifting within the on board neural network, and the lingering after images experienced by the pilots… everything points to a neural echo. The only way we’ve been able to get rid of them is by replacing the affected neural components entirely. There’s nothing else wrong with the Jaeger, or the software, as far as I can tell.”

“But what you’re suggesting isn’t just the neural net,” the Commander responded, looking at a datapad. “You’re saying we have to replace the sensors too? Throughout the Jaeger?”

“The sensors are a critical part of the network. They produce the feedback necessary for the pilots to-”

“I know what they do,” the Commander interrupted and immediately bit his tongue as Mako, and everyone else in the Pod stared at him with wide eyes. He rubbed his face with a groan, but didn’t apologize.

“It’s possible that the sensors and relays themselves have been burnt out and are contributing to the echoes the pilots experienced.”

“I thought you said the sensors were operating within normal parameters,” the Commander asked Frolov, who nodded quickly.

“They are,” he said, “when the pilots aren’t drifting. It works fine with simulated ones,” he added. The Commander shook his head and sighed.

“Thank you, Miss Mori, your input has been invaluable,” he drawled, leaving the others wondering, but not for long. “I’m going to have to call it,” he stated.

Robert watched, expecting Frolov, to get angry, to fight, to do something. But he stood incredibly still and said nothing. “We can’t commit any more resources to this,” the Commander said and that was it. Robert, Frolov, and the Commander couldn’t seem to look at each other, instead looking at the rigs, the hydraulics, or the control panel. Mako however, did not have that problem, and leveled her gaze on the Commander.

“What do you intend to do with it then?” she asked. The Commander was rubbing his face again, and gave a shrug. “With respect, might I suggest sending it to Kodiak Island? The Jaeger Academy is opening a museum. There will be more than enough room, and specialists to keep it in good condition. It’s invaluable, considering its service record,” she proposed. The Commander shot her a dubious look. “Unless you already had plans for it, given the situation,” she added.

“I’ll talk to the Boss,” he muttered, “at this point I’m up for putting it back where we found the God damn thing,” he said under his breath and exited the Conn-Pod.

The Boss agreed and Cherno Alpha was to be turned over to the Jaeger program once the crew removed the brand new reactor.

On her way out of the Jaeger bay, Mako passed by the tech’s toolboxes and the shelves of spare parts and electronics.

A media card, at odds with the pristine cables, and forgotten amongst the nuts and bolts caught her eye. She had to catch herself before her jaw dropped. She didn’t know where she expected they’d put it, but not just tossed on a shelf, that was for sure. After a quick glance around, she brushed against the shelf and took the tiny card with her, leaving the Vladivostok Shatterdome for good.

 

 

 

 

 

A small squadron of helicopters hauled the deactivated Cherno Alpha to Kodiak Island, making frequent stops for both refueling and media coverage. After the initial influx of visitors, sightseers, and those paying their respects in the months after the addition of a mostly complete Jaeger, the museum’s patronage died down to a trickle.

Bill Walker had been the museum’s night guard since it opened and he particularly enjoyed the solitude of his quiet patrols. The still darkness brought him comfort in the hangar and the chill when walking between buildings kept him awake.

One night when he approached the museum’s hangar, he noticed light streaming out the windows, and his brow furrowed. Were children so brazen these days to turn on the lights in the middle of the night after hours, he wondered, as he hurried to the bay.

He slammed open the door and expected to hear shouts and scurrying of feet, but instead was greeted with silence and bright beams from Cherno Alpha’s floodlights. He stared in astonishment as he walked up to it. Red ropes surrounded it and as far as he could tell none of them had been moved. He ducked under them and inspected the Jaeger. It stood in its normal pose, towering over the rest of the museum pieces, with its heavy fists at its side, and its floodlights illuminating the rafters.

He circled the Jaeger’s feet, but could find no ladders, ropes, or other means of scaling it, and saw no evidence of tampering. Looking around with his flashlight, he shook his head and instead went to the control board behind the Jaeger. It had been hooked up to control several of the Jaeger’s basic functions, including turning the lights on and off, for show.

Shining his flashlight on it, he soon realized the system had somehow transitioned to an active state, instead of the hibernation the handler usually put it in at the end of the day. Puzzled, he tapped the control for the floodlights, and the room went dark. Another tap and the turbines whirred down to an almost silent state, and the control board went back into hibernation.

Satisfied and with one last glance up at the towering machine, he continued on his rounds.

He opened the door to the training barracks and began to walk through when a resounding BOOM echoed as sharp as a whip and a shockwave hit his back, sending him staggering into a nearby bunk as the barracks’ dioramas jittered under protective glass. Trying to get his heart to settle back into his chest, he adjusted his scarf and twirled around, looking this way and that. Everything around him sat still, if slightly off kilter, a fraction off from where it had been, but he ran back to the Jaeger bay.

As he approached it, light filtered through the windows again, and his mouth went dry. He slammed open the door once again, and sure enough, Cherno Alpha’s floodlights shone bright into the darkness of the Jaeger bay. He froze in the entryway, and the door slowly swung back to hit him on the shoulder. His mouth hung agape as he stared up at the Jaeger looming over the other museum pieces, signs, and dioramas.

He took a step back, the door following, shielding him from the scene that greeted him. After one last look, he turned and ran.

Behind him, Cherno Alpha stood sentry over the museum, its floodlights on, and its fists knuckle to knuckle in its customary challenge.


	4. Striker Eureka: She'll Be Right

He hadn’t been to Australia since Chuck’s memorial service. It had been a pleasantly warm, sunny January day in Sydney, the weather too mellow for the feelings roiling inside Herc. Now, as he touched down in Canberra during the peak of the summer heat, the still, scorched air hit his face the moment he stepped through the airport doors with his appointed chauffeur. The black sedan waiting for them was gleaming in the sun, the door hot to the touch when Herc climbed in. The black leather seats made him feel even more uncomfortable, but as the driver started the engine, cool air started to blow in.

 

The drift technology had lent itself poorly to commercial use. When a pair of Australian whiz kids had approached him and proposed a business deal between the PPDC and their independent biomedical engineering project, Herc didn’t need to think twice about it. They intended to research how well drift technology could be adapted to myoelectic prostheses and treatment for spinal injuries, and hoped to use as much of the pre-existing Jaeger tech as possible to build a functioning prototype. They had plenty of old Jaeger parts lying around. Striker had needed repairs after it took down Mutavore, and the equipment taken out of her had been lying in storage since then.

The engineers had travelled between Hong Kong and Canberra at regular intervals, both to keep Herc and by extension the Secretary-General updated on the progress, as well as to ship more parts to the research facilities in Australia. It took them two years to get to an early testing stage, and apparently they wanted someone with experience with the neural bridge to do the honours.

Herc had been reluctant when they’d requested him, but something akin to national pride nagged at him until he gave in and booked the flight.

 

Herc lost himself in the passing scenery as they drove towards the city, air conditioning blasting away. He hadn’t been in Canberra in decades, and it looked vastly different in his memories. He didn’t remember the heat being this bad during his previous visits.

They pulled up in front of a looming building, the towering glass and steel frame reflecting the afternoon sun.

“Through the doors, sir,” his driver motioned. “We’ll deliver your things to the hotel.”

“Thank you,” Herc nodded. The sedan pulled away as he walked through the glass doors into a blissfully cool lobby.

“Marshall Hansen!” A short, plump man rushed towards him from the reception desk, a younger man in tow.

“Doctor Thompson, Doctor White,” Herc nodded, shaking the offered hands firmly.

“Shall we skip the ceremonies and head straight to the lab?” Dr Thompson suggested and started leading them towards the elevators.

“I assume you’ve done initial runs to make sure my brain won’t get fried,” Herc asked,

Dr Thompson gave an awkward laugh. “We’ve calibrated the electric pulses and neural transmitters carefully. We’ve done some initial testing on the brain-computer connections, so no one will be fried.”

“Reassuring,” Herc said dryly. Dr White shot him a grin.

“We wouldn’t danger a national hero,” he said, and Herc winced internally.

“This way, Marshall Hansen,” Dr Thompson motioned him in through the lab doors eagerly.

“Let me tell you, we’re honoured to have you here: the best of our own Rangers testing Australian technology!”

_Best one alive_ , Herc thought, shaking it out of his mind. “No problem,” he said gruffly. “It’s an honour to be here.” And it was, no matter how awkward he felt outside his PPDC duties. The world needed to move on; the Jaeger culture dismantled. Putting the technology to medical use seemed like a good first step.

 

 

The lab was a large pristine room gleaming with metal and glass surfaces. The doctors led him to a machine that looked like a tyreless wheelchair crossed with a Jaeger motion harness.

“If you would,” Dr White motioned, and Herc settled into the chair awkwardly. They wheeled a computer screen in front him, and set a keyboard in his lap before approaching with a webbed helmet. He eyed it suspiciously.

“Is that a Pons?”

“Yessir. It was combined from Doctor Geiszler’s spare materials, he gave us some excellent pointers.”

“Geiszler’s?” Herc said, trying not to let his doubt show. Dr White laughed.

“Don’t worry, we’ve ran thorough diagnostics on it, the science is very accurate.”

Herc grunted and let them fit the helmet on him, and then settled back against the chair and waited as the doctors hooked the Pons wires into the rigging.

“Now, we’re going to bypass your spinal cord since we’ll just want to test how well the information travels between the brain-computer interfaces. I’m going to turn it on now.” Dr White entered a code into the console, and a steady electric hum reverberated from somewhere behind Herc.

“We would like you to attempt to control the computer with your brain impulses,” Dr White said, pointing at the screen. “Please concentrate on the neuro program and think of opening it. The neurons will send signals and the Pons should transmit them to the computer. The program is slightly modified version of the interface used to enable communicating between the pilots and the Jaeger so it shouldn’t be too difficult for you.”

He handed Herc a slip of paper with “HHansen/skyh4” written on it. “That’ll be your password and username.”

“Right,” Herc muttered, and did as instructed. He felt foolish, like he was trying to will the computer, but-

The program activated and a login screen popped up. Herc thought of the username letters individually and the computer typed them out in order. Just for the sake of testing he thought “delete”, and then tried to enter the whole username at once. He raised his brow as it appeared on the screen without errors. “Well I’ll be damned.”

The doctors were beaming at him. “As we said, we’ve tested the initial connection, but we had to hack together some of the software to get it to work. The results we got weren’t nearly this effective,” Dr White said.

“We did try to use drift technology to translate neural coding from one of our assistants, but he simply wasn’t capable of the same level of concentration as you,” Dr Thompson added. Herc noticed he sounded a little giddy.

“How were you going to make it user friendly for civilians?” Herc asked as he thought of his password and then “ _log in_ ”. He gave an approving sound as the computer logged him in successfully despite him dividing his attention between the task at hand and holding up a conversation.

“The program will need a lot of refactoring, and the Pons would benefit from a more… blunt neuron reader. As it is, it’s almost exactly what it would need to be to pilot a Jaeger, which is frankly some incredibly fine-tuned technology. It would never just work right off the bat at this point.”

Dr White nodded. “We’re considering a sort of a stepladder approach. As one would with physical therapy, the patient would have to start with basic functions like moving a toe, and slowly, as they adjust to using the neural connection, adjust the connection system sensitivity little by little to expand their capabilities.”

“I’m impressed,” Herc smiled. “You gentlemen might actually be onto something here.”

Dr Thompson laughed. “Well, we’re still a long way from a finished product. We’ve had some initial success sending nerve impulses manually from the computer to the muscle support brace,” he tapped at the cannibalised motion rig. “But there’s a lot of work to be done before we have a fully assembled prototype.”

Herc nodded, and turned his attention back to the computer screen. There were various commands for muscle movements listed in an activity bar, and Herc could see what the doctors meant by basic functions. He thought about moving his left leg, and the corresponding icon lit up on the screen and came into focus.

He started going through the commands, and then tried making it as instinctual as possible, thinking loudly of trivial things while actually moving his limbs physically to see if the program could differentiate. He was about to congratulate the doctors on the robust fluency of the brain-machine interface, when the computer chirped and kicked him out of the program.

“Eh, what’s this?” Dr White said, and started checking the connections to the computer.

The login screen activated again, and Herc wasn’t sure if he’d subconsciously sent the command, when text appeared in the username box.

“R-CHAN_512.66-D”

Herc felt blood drain from his face. The doctors were fussing around him. “Marshall?”

He watched an encrypted password appear in the second box. He swallowed thickly. “It’s not me,” he croaked. He didn’t know Chuck’s password.

The computer gave an error message. “Login failed.” Of course it had, this wasn’t the PPDC database; their logins wouldn’t work.

“Sean, check the feedback, it has to be muddling the data somehow,” Dr Thompson said, sounding irritated. Dr White took the keyboard from Herc’s lap and started typing, but as he opened the command prompt and began to type, the Jaeger startup command appeared instead. It failed, and was replaced with command to call up the Conn-Pod heads up display.

Something cold settled in the pit of Herc’s belly.

“Were any of the neural bridge components actually used in Striker Eureka, or did you get it all from Geiszler?”

The doctors looked at each other. “There are parts that came out of the Jaeger during it’s last maintenance, yes,” said Dr White.

“Where- Do you know which pilot side they came from?” Herc already knew the answer though.

“Well, both sides, but I believe the ones we’re using now are from the left handed pilot.”

Dr Thompson nodded in confirmation. “Do you know what the issue is?”

Herc sighed and ran his palm over his face. “Neural echoes,” he said. “The most I understand of them is that sometimes pilot thoughts end up stored in caches and parts midway between the pilot and the actual interface, and-” he gestured at the screen. “End up creating random segments of code and generally dodgy behaviour. But I’m not really the expert on it.”

Dr Thompson gave a frustrated sigh. “We’d rather not force a shutdown, at least physically. We’d have to shut down power to the whole system, and I’m not sure if the connection between the Pons and the computer would be left unharmed or if the electric fluctuation could cause damage to the circuitry.”

They watched silently as Chuck’s profile kept trying to enter old Jaeger initialisation commands into a database that could not recognise or execute them.

ROOT EXEC [MRK5-STRK-ERKA-CMD] CONFIG WORKSTATION | FIND [R-HHAN_832.84-G]

Herc felt sick. “Let me try something,” he said softly, and Dr White stepped away from the screen, moving the keyboard out of the way.

Herc concentrated his thoughts to overriding the commands appearing on the display. He gave the computer the old Jaeger communications shut down command as a red herring, and waited.

It didn’t help. Next a weapons control command typed itself onto the screen, and Herc followed with a termination command. It was a stupid, heartbreaking game with what amounted to a glitch in the system.

“Just cut the power,” Herc finally said thickly, taking the Pons off.

Dr Thompson nodded gravely. Herc closed his eyes and tried to clear his head as they started to disconnect the equipment.

They waited as it powered down, and then cycled the power, waiting for the computer to start up again.

Dr White laughed when the computer chirped and whirred to life. Herc gave a breath of relief when the startup screen appeared normally and output began crawling across the screen.

IMPROPER SHUT DOWN DETECTED

PRESS ESCAPE TO INTERRUPT NORMAL STARTUP PROCEDURE IN 10 SECONDS

Herc was about to get up and suggest the doctors find a copy of a Jaeger maintenance manual, when the something interrupted the startup and the computer displayed the administrator command prompt screen.

“What the hell?” Dr Thompson leaned over Herc’s shoulder. “I disconnected the computer from the neural interface completely. Did the neural echo save itself in system memory somewhere? Is that normal for these ‘random code segments’?”

“No,” Herc said softly. “It’s not.”

He leaned over the keyboard and began to type an old command, something he knew shouldn’t work without the modified Jaeger neural interface.

“ECHO M-HHAN_832.84-G RIGHT HEMISPHERE CALIBRATED”

They waited as the cursor blinked idly, a cold feeling trickling down Herc’s spine.

Bile rose in his throat as a single word appeared on the screen.

 

“ _DAD?_ ”


End file.
